Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told members of parliament they risked plunging Italy into the middle of the euro zone's debt crisis if they voted against him in a no-confidence vote due on Tuesday. Speaking in the Senate a day before a showdown that could force him from office and trigger early elections, Berlusconi said his government had kept Italy out of the turmoil but that the threat of instability remained. "It is madness to initiate a crisis without any foreseeable solutions," he said. A year of party infighting and corruption and sex scandals has hit Berlusconi's leadership credentials while a scandal over waste.

A Paris court has said Continental Airlines was "criminally responsible" for the crash of a Concorde supersonic jet 10 years ago, and fined it 200,000 euros. It has also been ordered to pay 1m euros to the jet's operator Air France. A Continental mechanic, John Taylor, was given a 15-month suspended prison sentence over the crash. Continental has said it will appeal, saying the verdict is "absurd" and "only protects French interests". The Concorde caught fire shortly after take-off from Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris in July 2000, killing 113 people.

Calling attention to Parliament's failure to achieve its aim of comprehensive scrutiny for MEPs over the European External Action Service (EEAS), Spanish GUE/NGL MEP Willy Meyer told EU Foreign Policy chief Catherine Ashton that his group was "unconvinced" by the militarised, non-transparent and uncontrollable structure of the EEAS today in the European Parliament.
 
"Our group cannot support this as the structure doesn't convince us. If troops are going to be sent abroad then the EP should have full powers of scrutiny; this hasn't been achieved" he said. On behalf of the group, Meyer also expressed his solidarity with French workers on strike today.
 
Also speaking on the issue, Czech MEP Jiří Maštálka said that the new service would still mean that the EU could sometimes be left without a foreign policy on key issues and cited problems with the composition and geographic balance of the diplomatic corps.